Last night we had a social Zoom with my UK colleagues. The idea was to catch up exactly a year after we've started working from home. As a company, we have weekly team meetings but we've only had a few more intimate catch-ups over the last 12 months.

I thought it would be fun to get things going with a game of Two Truths and a Lie. We tried to come up with lockdown stories to fool each other. It turns out that people are gullible, especially in the hands of seasoned pranksters. Still, I found it incredible that we had no idea whether our close colleagues were telling the truth about running a half marathon, nearly poisoning the entire family with a cake decorated with inedible flowers or abstaining from alcohol in the last 6 months. I claimed to have visited seven countries other than the UK last year - no one (including me) could believe it. And yet it's true.  

It really brought home what we know to be true: offices are not just desks, ergonomic chairs and meeting rooms. It's where spontaneous exchanges of information take place all the time. There are industry news, updates from meeting clients, a little gossip and endless opportunities to test ideas, gauge opinions and get feedback you simply cannot receive via Zoom. 

Last night I became so despaired at my ability to separate wheat from the chuff that I wondered what it must be like when one's job is to make investment, hiring or commercial decisions using Zoom. Granted, a face-to-face meeting is not enough to do proper due diligence but personal interaction is vital to complete the picture you have otherwise got from numbers and words. And how would you ever know if a person who works for you is feeling down or overwhelmed if you rely on occasional Zoom? A member of your team might be giving you the standard "I'm good, thanks" and look the part on the screen. In the office, you and your colleagues would surely be able to pick on telling signs of someone's depression or anxiety but you'd never know in lockdown. 

The absence of serendipitous moments by the proverbial water cooler, challenges on how to communicate and the detrimental effect on our mental wellbeing are difficult to measure but intuitively we know that our productivity must have suffered over the last 12 months. We can only hope that things will simply get better once the lockdown ends. In the meantime, I'll savour my feat of fooling nearly everyone with a story of a wolf pup my neighbours had kept as a pet during my childhood in Russia... 

Last year I read an illuminating book Brit(ish) by Afua Hirsh in which she shared her view on observing Black History Month each October. At school and in the media we profile Black heroes once a year and discuss their lives and experiences. How about we incorporated Black history into British or American history and changed the narrative from the celebration of the British imperial achievements to a more balanced account, including experiences of the natives of former colonies? Perhaps we would learn how that less than straightforward history shaped our society. Instead of condemning advocates of why statues must fall, we might wonder whose names adorn our art institutions, such as Tate.

Tate museums, in case you didn't know, are named after the philanthropist Henry Tate, who made his money via Tate & Lyle, a British sugar refining business, which relied on slave labour (and continued exploitation of Afro-Caribbeans after the slavery had been abolished). I am grateful to Sir Henry for his generosity, but equally I feel it's good to know where the money came from. 

And now, in case I haven't learned the lesson from Black History Month, I get to have first hand experience. March 2021 is now Women's History Month, says the US government. Come to think of it, it's a bit of an upgrade since according to this website, the origins of this "celebration" date back to 1981 when Congress authorised women's history to be celebrated for the whole week before progressing it to a month. We should be joyful!

As a result, I got a handful of emails last week about panels celebrating women's achievements and caught glimpse of media headlines putting spotlight on heroines in all walks of life. Without realising it, I even joined he movement by celebrating 8 March, International Women's Day, with a series of Instagram posts about women who had especially inspired me in the last 12 months. 

But you know what? It was a little hard going with everything that has been on top of the media agenda otherwise. The women making headlines were Nicola Sturgeon, Meghan Markle and now Sarah Everard - all the for the wrong reasons. Commemorating women's history one month a year and patting yourself on the back will not improve visibility of women's achievements or the inequality in our society. Women - half of the world's population - cannot be forgotten for most of the year. Their agenda must be everyone's agenda, otherwise, as Caroline Criado-Perez has described so well in her book, Invisible Women, we'll keep getting smartphones too big for an average woman's hand, drugs which have not been properly tested on women and cars which have not been crash-tested with female body dummies. 

I'm sure Women's History Month and all the associated initiatives have been well intentioned. We'll just have to hope that a dose of empowerment will carry us through the rest of the year.

I'll finish on a lighter note:

- How many feminists does it take to change a lightbulb?- None. It’s not the lightbulb that needs changing.

I've just finished reading A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by a Booker Prize-winning author, George Saunders, in which he analyses seven Russian XIX century short stories and delivers a master class on writing, reading and life. It's an ingenious workbook for writers and geeky readers who obsess about structure, flow, language and meaning. George Saunders, who teachers creative writing at Syracuse University in New York, accomplished a luminous and hilarious read, which also helped me reconnect with the literature's best short story tellers - Chekhov, Tolstoy, Turgenev and Gogol. 

The stories Saunders picked for his book stayed with me. I tried to describe them to a friend but none of the adjectives I sampled ("great", "epic", "thought-provoking") would do - until I got it. These stories made me feel uncomfortable. See for yourself.

In Tolstoy's "Master and Man", an arrogant egotist never reforms. No character transformation from the moral-ethical giant!

In Chekhov's "In the Cart", a woman is forced to live a hard, boring life of a provincial teacher no one appreciates. There is no hope for her to get out, no Prince Charming comes to the rescue either.

In Turgenev's "The Singers", peasants are deeply touched by the holy beauty of music - only to get utterly wasted later, the only thing they know.

In Gogol's "The Nose", a sycophant who loses his nose gets it back and continues to live a shallow life, chasing skirts. 

In Chekhov's "The Darling", a woman only becomes alive when attached to a man. She has no opinion of her own, no purpose. She never learns. 

"Alyosha the Pot" follows orders, never causes trouble, gets pushed around a lot. What does Tolstoy do? He kills him. End of. Life is unfair. 

In those short stories (all Russian short stories?) there are no happy endings, no escapism - Bridgerton it is not. You root for Alyosha the Pot to stand up to his father, but he meekly resigns to his fate, like any poor uneducated young man in the turn of the century Russia. You hope that "The Darling" starts to love herself but her clingingness never subsidies. You want Chekhov to give his schoolteacher "In the Cart" some hope at the end of the day, but she just cries "Mama!" and bursts into tears. It's just like in life - we don't get our big breaks and instead are repeatedly crushed down with a myriad of tiny disappointments until we harden with resilience. 

​The truth of these stories made me feel uncomfortable. But it gave me some consolation too. We live in seriously testing times which have exposed human flaws like never before. News stories about the UK government officials giving away huge contracts to their mates make us feel indignant, but what of the well-publicised reluctance of some people to get vaccinated against Covid-19? These jabs, a triumph of science and technology, are our way out to save lives, open economies, help people get back to work and improve mental health of billions of people after months of lockdowns. Yet the reluctance is understandable too: some are worried about long-term side effects of vaccines, others do not trust their governments. People who refuse to get jabs are selfish. Consciously or not, they rely on the herd immunity, same as people who throw litter rely on someone else to clean the streets after them. What to think?

I found that uncomfortable stories helped me attune my own compass to today's moral dilemmas. I will not forget PPE contracts awarded to Tories' mates at the next General Election, nor will I hire a Moscow-based photographer whose otherwise busy Instagram account stayed silent during anti-corruption protests in Russia. I'm proud of the UK government's success with the vaccination roll-out, and I understand that posting #FreeNavalny may cause one lose certain clients, but unlike women or peasants in the XIX century Russia, most of us have the agency to make choices and I, for one, want to do the right thing. 

Come to think of it, the best stories have always been uncomfortable. You may watch Emily in Paris but you'll forget it in a week. It's a Sin, on the other hand, will haunt you. Writers like Lionel Shriver, Kazuo Ishiguro, Mohsin Hamid, Svetlana Alexievich take on difficult issues and odious human behaviour which get under the skin. Their books are sometimes - often even - not well received by the general public because they force us to consider our own flaws and skeletons in the closet. But you know your conscience is working extra hard when you feel frustrated having been denied a happy ending in a story you've invested in.

The reason uncomfortable stories stand out is because there aren't many of them around. As Kazuo Ishiguro pointed out in a recent interview, a "climate of fear" is preventing some people from writing what they want. "I very much fear for the younger generation of writers" who are self-censoring by avoiding writing from certain viewpoints or including characters outside their immediate experiences. He said they may be concerned that an "anonymous lynch mob will turn up online and make their lives a misery". God forbid a white creative comes up with a black protagonist or expresses a non-liberal mainstream view on consumption of meat, transgender, sweat shops or climate crisis. 

At the beginning of the year I felt a little dispirited as neither books nor TV series I consumed got through to me. But I now I feel reinvigorated. True, reading Tolstoy and Chekhov makes any - even Booker-Prize winning writers - feel like they'll never be good enough. But the lesson here for all of us is that if you have came across an uncomfortable story in a book or on screen, give yourself a break. Have a rest. And then seek another one. 

I recently listened to a radio programme More or Less on BBC Radio 4 where they talked about whether birds started singing more loudly. It surely felt this way in spring 2020 when during the lockdown in London birds were having a field day. It turned out that birds weren’t in fact signing more loudly: if anything, they didn’t have to strain themselves in the absence of traffic and other human noise pollution. Ordinarily, birds have to raise their volume to get heard but this spring we happened to make their job easier by giving them a platform to express themselves with gusto. 

In the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd in Minnesota and the rise of #BlackLivesMatter movement in the US, UK and globally, some may wonder why black people are shouting. The answer is simple. They are protesting and rioting because otherwise they cannot get themselves heard. They have tried and tried, but little has changed. They are shouting in desperation hoping that this time the rest of us will listen.

I sat down to write this not because I want to teach someone a lesson - there are plenty of preachers out there on social media summarising #BlackLivesMatter into neat Instagram images. I’m writing this, like pretty much every Life Tonic I’ve written to date, to process this matter myself. Writing helps me so after watching and reading and talking and listening, I sat down to put my tangled thoughts down. 

I’m pretty sure I haven’t figured it all out and that’s OK. There is plenty I don’t know. I wish our leaders admitted that more often. It’s OK to make mistakes. It’s not OK not to try to do something when our fellow citizens are risking their lives amidst the pandemic to campaign for change.

The first #BlackLivesMatter message I heard loud and clear is that we, white people, need to shut up and listen for a change. I did some DIY over the weekend, a rather thought-provoking activity, as it turns out, and found myself contemplating my white privilege. It sounds funny only if you haven’t thought about it properly. 

White privilege quite simply refers to the fact that white people don’t have to deal with negative assumptions made about them based solely on the colour of their skin, whereas black people experience it every day. Black people have to “prove themselves” in everyday situations because of the prejudicial assumptions made about them at work, on the street, etc. Someone put it well: white privilege doesn’t mean your life isn’t hard, it just means that the colour of your skin isn’t making it harder.  

I admit that I have not thought much about it before. Now that I have, it makes me look back and realise that black people have to make so much effort just to avoid some of prejudice they experience. I work closely with a black person who never swears and is exceedingly polite. In Small Island by Andrea Levy I read about black kids of the British Empire being taught manners by their mothers so that a white man could never find a reason to reproach them. Last week I cycled to Finsbury Park where a black man about to enter the gate ahead of me attempted to give me way. Why? I arrived after him. And I saw very clearly it was his habit to let people like me go through first. 

Another thing I learned about myself walking with a friend along the Regent’s Canal on Saturday is that the colour-blindness I pride myself in may be missing a point. I understand colour-blindness to be a virtue in that I see the person not the colour of his skin. Indeed, I never think of my people of colour friends any differently than I think of my white friends. And yet this means that I also choose not to see the colour of their skin and how it may affect their lives. I see a handsome, successful, interesting to talk to Goldman Sachs banker but not what it might feel like to be one of the very few people of colour at the top of that institution or what it took him to get there. I see a beautiful, fun-loving, exercise junkie I used to work with, but it never occurred to me that she was once explicitly told what kind of hairstyles were acceptable for a black woman to wear in our office. 

Having said that, I don’t know what to do with this new angle I now see. I tried calling a black friend and asking if she had a racism-free day and we both laughed. I don’t expect anyone to call me and say: “Any casual sexism you experienced today?” either. But perhaps we could all learn to open up a bit and talk about our experiences. 

Some say don’t make comparisons of your own experience to #BlackLivesMatter but I disagree. Comparisons is what helps us relate, understand and learn. Empathy isn’t something you can buy on Amazon, it’s a muscle which gets better with exercise. #BlackLivesMatter took over our lives in the same way #MeToo hashtag took over social media a couple of years ago. I will never forget that experience of seeing so many women posting their stories or just #MeToo on their Facebook walls. It was truly overwhelming and brought up some deeply buried memories. It was also life-reaffirming and gave me hope that going forward we won’t tolerate harassment, and the new generation of women especially would be brave to speak up.

I realised that watching a black man pinned down by a white policeman begging for mercy and the subsequent outcry from the black communities must have brought up all sorts of memories for people of colour. We are advised to check up on our friends and I tried. But that isn’t easy either. I struggle, for example, to find the right words for a grieving person, but formulating a text message about racial abuse is something else entirely. 

Yesterday the chief executive of my company invited all of us to write to him and suggest what we could do to make sure that Black Lives Matter. If there is thing you could do, what would it be?

I was sort prepared because I did spend some time thinking about it and bouncing some ideas off my friends. We talked about mentorship and even more importantly sponsorship of black talent, creating opportunities where rather than having a token black presence in governing institutions, companies and on screen, we should encourage and support people of colour to progress their ambitions. Plenty of such initiatives already exist, e.g. a friend of mine is involved in promoting greater diversity of undergraduates in Cambridge, venture capital fund Backstage Capital runs an accelerator programme to help underrepresented founders in the US and in London. 

But if I had to choose one thing with the widest reach and longest impact, it’s education. I’m not familiar with the school curriculum be it history, literature or arts here in the UK or in the US and I would leave it to specialists to educate us on that. What I have in mind are two practical ways we could try to reach everyone from preschool kids to pensioners promenading in Thanet.

First, we need to give black people a platform to speak while white people should just shut up and listen. 

Right now black people / people of colour talk in an echo chamber while we, white people, occasionally put black people on comedy panels, insert them into theatre plays, even elect them so we can pat ourselves on the back and move on. This is tokenism. 

Let’s give black people the platform. If you currently work in a company hosting regular Zoom meetings, invite non-white members of your staff to speak. Sure it requires some bravery but they don’t need to talk about racism. They could simply share their everyday experiences like the achievements of their kids or the last holiday they enjoyed and keep longing for during lockdown. Maybe the next person will talk about people who inspired them or how they felt when Obama was elected and how they feel now. Someone may even talk about how they taught their kids about racism and even invite white parents to share what they told their kids about prejudice. 

This is practical and I believe it could make a huge difference in a small way. 

Second, we need to create and market content which educates the public at large. 

There is plenty to cover.

For example, did you know that black women are five times more likely to die in pregnancy, birth or postpartum than white women in Britain? I listened to a Woman’s Hour podcast about it last summer and I still remember exactly where I was and what I was doing (hiking to Kilemche village in Kyrgyzstan). 

We need to inspire black kids to reach for the stars, teach them confidence, encourage all young adults to call out discrimination when they see it, prompt teachers to think harder about books and art works they choose for their pupils. 

I started following an amazing account on Instagram called @ablackhistoryofart. It’s run by a Cambridge student studying art who discovered there was no black art on the curriculum so she started posting works of black artists and putting interesting captions like what does a hoody symbolise or how does it make you feel. Next thing you know people will start buying paintings from black artists… or so I hope. 

Luckily, we now live in the world with an abundance of media platforms with films, TV series, podcasts, books, blogs, radio shows, plays, live events - all of these are capable to educate and inspire us to become better citizens. Why, even pub quizzes could include questions like “How many CEOs of Fortune 500 companies in the US are black?” or “What was the highest grossing movie made by a black director?”  or “Which sport is Simone Biles famous for?” or “Whose real name is Michael Omari or, if you like, Michael Ebenazer Kwadjo Omari Owuo Jr? (The answers are below.) 

I’m pretty confident that most people reading this are already doing something to educate themselves. Have you heard that Brit-ish, a book by Afua Hirsh has actually been sold out on Amazon? But let’s be honest, not everyone is like that so we need all types of content to reach every white policeman in Minnesota and every Wetherspoon’s patron here in the UK. We need broadcasters, publishers, movie studios to put some money behind content highlighting black lives, and we, as consumers, need to spend our money so that it becomes not just a nice thing to do but a profitable thing too. (Here is an independent publisher which creates shelf space for diverse writers.)

If this ended up being a long article, this is by no means all. I'm still thinking and processing it all and I hope I won’t ever stop. All thoughts and ideas welcome. 

Answers: 4; Black Panther; Gymnastics; Stormzy 

It's topic du jour and I too decided to try my luck as a clairvoyant.

1. Life will largely go back to normal
Every time I go travelling to some remote place where life is slower and everything is cheaper, I come back to London resolved to spend less money on such extravagant things as takeaway coffee and workout classes when I could easily go for a run or find something on YouTube. I vow not to buy clothes and cycle to work more often. I promise myself not to order overpriced wine at the theatre and just enjoy the art. These resolutions don't last a week.

Let's face it: once we are allowed to go out again and go back to some modified version of the previous routine, life will largely go back to normal. Sporty people will exercise more, couch potatoes will abandon their attempts at Zoom yoga as soon as the hype dies down. Health evangelists will buy organic, cook from scratch and monitor their quality of sleep, while the rest of the population will live off Deliveroo and easy meals. People who love being sociable will organise parties, BBQs and pub quizzes. Introverts will stay at home loving the fact that they choose, rather than are forced, to do so. 

Postmen, bus drivers, doctors and nurses, cash till operators and rubbish collectors will get their thank yous from people who always thank them. They will still be shouted at by some others. 

Someone I knew had bone marrow cancer. He was an investment banker - a stressful job with long hours, unhealthy lifestyle and superiors with pretty poor management skills. He recovered... and went back to banking. Plus ça change. 

2. Cash will be out
It's been a long time coming and finally cash economy received a fatal blow. I predict that in developed economies we'll go completely cashless just like they did it a decade ago in Iceland. Here in Britain some retailers were still insisting on minimum spend to accept cards, while some self-employed demanded cash for their undeclared services. The UK government offered a rescue package to self-employed promising to pay up to £2,500 a month or 80% of the average monthly profit for the last three years to anyone with trading profits of up to £50,000 a year. That is incredibly generous - if only every hairdresser, handyman and cleaner was honest with the taxman in the first place. 

I hate carrying cash and have been long applauding businesses which went "card only" before the lockdown. Portable card readers, card companies and mobile-only banks will benefit from going cashless as will we all from avoiding dirty banknotes.

3. Gloves will be in
When did we stop wearing gloves? In the last novels I read set in Russia in the XIX century and in the 1948 England upper and middle class women wore gloves. I predict that pretty summer gloves will soon pop up in your Instagram feed. 

4. Telemedicine will finally become widely adopted
Lockdown is a strange time. You get a cough or chest pain and yet because you aren't critically ill - gasping for breath or unable to bring down high fever - you can't see a doctor with a stethoscope. This is definitely not normal. However, when I wasn't well, I was able to call my GP surgery and a doctor called me back using WhatsApp's video function. I received medical advice just an hour after I called for help and I got it remotely. Normally, it takes 7-10 working days for me to get an appointment, and then a GP would refer me to a specialist. That is nonsense. Clearly, there are lots of conditions which need to be examined face-to-face and you can't get a jab remotely but telemedicine is extremely useful to deal with many maladies. 

What's interesting is that my GP used WhatsApp. Perhaps fancy telemedicine startups like Babylon Health have overcooked their solutions to the most acute problem - access to a doctor. 

5. What good leadership looks like will change
I don't read many Harvard Business Review articles on management and leadership, yet it's impossible not to pick up on an academic shift away from charismatic "save the day" superheroes towards practical, empathetic kind of leaders we really need.

Covid-19 set the world to rights.

In politics, caring, compassionate, decisive and prudent leadership of Angela Merkel and Jacinda  Ardern appear in stark contrast to high octane, shambolic, "essay crisis" style of Boris Johnson and Donald Trump. Vladimir Putin who has self-isolated in a cosy dacha with open fire and pretty Easter cakes will hold on to power but he will never recover his popularity. 

In business, it's managers who overcommunicated, showed empathy and acted early and decisively, will harvest staff loyalty, productivity and better performance from their teams. We will see a shift in values in all spheres of life which will hopefully trickle down to electoral booths.

6. Masks will become ubiquitous
Do you remember when we were first ordered to organise toiletries into 100ml bottles and take just a small bag of them on a plane as hand luggage? We aren't quite convinced it helps prevent terrorist attacks but we got used to travelling this way. We don't mind it much at all. 

Masks will probably be enforced on public transport, flights and, who knows, perhaps even in theatre. Entrepreneurial folks will be selling masks outside popular attractions like Sagrada Familia or Pyramids of Giza. Why, I can even see a basic face mask included in the entrance ticket to Westminster Abbey!

Masks are uncomfortable and I would much rather have a shift in public consciousness so that contagious ill people would stay at home than potentially infect us but unless companies make it a rule that you mustn't travel to then office if you are sick, unless yoga studios allow you to cancel a class for free last minute if you wake up feeling unwell, people will keep "soldiering on" and spreading the viruses in public places. 

I remember getting my nails done in December. The technician was ill with watering eyes and sneezing constantly. She wasn't wearing a mask. I could either lose money (because I had booked in advance) and risk ending up without a manicure in the busy pre-Christmas period or I could hope for the best. I stayed and luckily I didn't get infected, however, I will never behave so carelessly again. Nail art might be someone's livelihood but not at the expense of my health. 

7. Content will forever be king but it will change
You know when someone recommends you a novel or a TV series and says: "You've got to persevere a little bit, it gets better after the first 100 pages / couple of episodes." Such stories will not survive.

We are already spoilt for choice when it comes to books or filmed entertainment because it takes just a couple of clicks to order a new book on Kindle or check out a new show on Netflix. The lockdown caused by the pandemic has also had an effect on our tastes. When I pick up a book, I want it to grab me and not let go (until it's mealtime). When I watch TV, I don't have the patience to persevere either. I want to be entertained and enthralled; I want a proper switch from BBC News. A kid put in front of an iPad by exhausted parents will have to get hooked instantly, and the same applies to adults. Storylines will have to become more gripping.

In fiction, I recommend Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes by Guzel Yakhina, Small Island by Andrea Levy or The Book Of Dust series by Philip Pullman. Watch Quiz (on ITV Hub in the UK) for filmed entertainment. 

8. Travel will become more of a luxury.
Travel is where my crystal ball betrays me. I want everything to go back to just as it was: cheap flights and hostels, low insurance premiums, frequent and careless weekend aways and the world staying open without travel permits and other virtual borders. But that's very unlikely. My rational mind tells me that flights will become expensive, hostels will be banned, travel insurance policies will become mandatory and expensive. Most countries will require you to produce a health passport showing that you've been vaccinated against Covid-19 if that's possible. 

Travel will become much more of a luxury, like it used to be for the generations before us. City breaks will be less popular than quiet retreats in the middle of nowhere. This is because Paris, London, Rome and New York will be full of masks reminding us of Covid-19 and the unease of the lockdown. By contrast, in nature it would be possible to surround yourself with mountains, meadows and the sea and pretend that the pandemic of 2020 never happened. 

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Cataclysmic events tend to have not just profound effects on people's lives but they also inspire remarkable works of art often causing a shift in culture. World War II, for example, was followed by a new movement on stage, producing "Theatre of the Absurd", dramatic works by Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco and Harold Pinter, to name a few. Theatre of the Absurd stemmed from the era of spiritual emptiness, when amidst precariousness of human existence all traditional values and meaning of life itself seemed to have become irrelevant. Theatre of the 1950s and 1960s produced narrative without plots, babbling monologues and incongruous settings. Yet the legacy of the bewildered, anxious, disoriented humankind we inherited through those "absurd" works is uncannily relevant to our own experience today.

If you are a little bored of Netflix, I encourage you to seek out a YouTube version of Beckett's play Happy Days, written and first staged in New York in 1961. (I watched the film version with Rosaleen Linehan as Winnie, directed by Patricia Rozema.)   

On the surface, the play is absurd. A middle-aged, well-preserved (Beckett's words, not mine!) woman wearing a low cut bodice and a pearl necklace is buried up to her waist in a mound amidst a desolate landscape. Beside her there is a large black bag which contains a bunch of items such as a toothbrush, a hairbrush, a mirror, a parasol and - I'll be candid with you - a revolver. There is a hole nearby, where her monosyllabic husband Willie dwells.

In Act I, Winnie wakes up and goes about her daily routine: brushing her teeth, making up her face, all the while chatting merrily, obviously putting an effort to stay cheerful and oblivious to her predicament. In Act II, we find Winnie buried up to her chin, a revolver still nearby but out of reach. Husband Willie is predictably useless, and the last scene ends with a song (the playwright is Irish, remember).

​I have no idea what Beckett was originally alluding to with his clever play but you won't be short of ideas of how to interpret his allegory. Winnie might be stuck in a hopeless marriage or she might have lived all her life in a small town, never daring to explore the world beyond her milieu. Winnie could have stayed in a  job she hated all her life, but she wasn't brave enough or believed she didn't have the means to move on. Winnie could be stuck at home self-isolating with her good-for-nothing husband, lonely and desperate for help and genuine human contact. She could even represent the entire humankind buried alive amidst the climate crisis, while her husband represents useless governments and policy-makers. 

My fascination with the play stems from its very vivid representation of the British "grin and bear" culture. The woman is unhappy, she is in some difficulty, yet she puts of a brave face day in, day out, talking to herself: "No, no... mustn't complain... so much to be thankful for..." Winnie keeps herself sane with her daily routine and her positive mental attitude: "What I find wonderful that not a day goes by without some blessing in disguise." Personally, I'm a big fan of practising gratitude, finding a silver lining in every cloud and keeping to a routine in uncertain times, but Winnie takes "glass half full" attitude to a whole new level. 

What's clearly helping Winnie is her bag. It's a sense of security, something solid to hold on to. It helps to understand why people are stockpiling non-perishable items during the Covid-19 outbreak: it's not about the fear of staying hungry - it's about doing something to restore one's peace of mind.

There is a scene where Winnie takes out a parasol from her bag and opens it up. Winnie is struggling to hold it up, she is very uncomfortable, and yet - she finds it impossible to put it down. That's another ingenious metaphor representing all sorts of burdens people are determined to keep carrying instead of resolutely dropping them and taking off both physical and mental loads. So often we feel "grinning and bearing" is the right approach, the righteous path even, but sometimes turning back down the mountain when struck with altitude sickness; closing down an underperforming business or walking away from an unhealthy relationship is the wiser thing to do. I found myself shouting at the screen: "Drop it down, you silly woman!" I can't say she heard me. 

What struck me about Happy Days is that it shows how reluctant we are to call for help. They say that the three most difficult things to say are "I'm sorry", "I love you" and "Help". I think "Help" is by far the hardest. Whether you are British and have been brought up with the "stiff upper lip" attitude or whether you are simply a modern independent human being used to relying on yourself, reaching out for help may seem like admitting a weakness or defeat. Now especially one is tempted to think that we are all in the same boat struggling to make sense with what's happening in the world. Asking for a favour may seem like an unreasonable indulgence.

It is not. Asking for help is not a weakness - it's a brave thing to do. You might get ignored, but you might get a lifeline. Most people - who are well, who are safe financially, who are simply fortunate to have their spirits up - are looking for ways to be useful. They want to help and it would make them feel good to do so. History and anthropology tell us that humans survive hardship through cooperation. We wouldn't be here today if our ancestors didn't get together to hunt, fight and look after the weak, i.e. the elderly, pregnant women and children. We wouldn't love our family and friends so fiercely had they not been kind to us when we needed their support.

In times like this, don't be a Winnie. Be brave and ask for help. 

About a week ago I was having a conversation with someone about a Russian friend of mine - a beautiful woman and a successful entrepreneur who had to kiss a few frogs before she had found her prince. It's not uncommon for intelligent, ambitious women to struggle to find a match: men are said to be intimidated by them. The man I was talking to suggested his own explanation which relates to Russian women in particular. "Russian women", he said, "are guilty of double standards. On the one hand, they want equal rights and opportunities but on the other hand, they expect men to do the DIY and buy them roses." Is that true? Are Russian women and women in general who want to get on in life but choose to look and behave in a traditionally feminine way guilty of having their cake and eating it?  And what should we do to avoid the unhappiness such alleged double standards cause us? 

Fortunately, the answer came to me just a couple of days later. I went to the Harold Pinter Theatre to see Conor McPherson’s new adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. The play, written in 1898 and widely performed ever since, goes some way to explain the female psyche we desperately need to change. 

In the play Sonya and her uncle Vanya manage the country estate which supports the urban lifestyle of Sonya's father and his second wife, Yelena, a young and glamorous woman who dazzles everyone during their brief stay in the countryside.  Sonya is bright, hard-working and kind. She is hopelessly in love with the local doctor, Astrov, who is in turn obsessed with Yelena. Sonya is in despair. She thinks she is ugly, certainly in comparison to beautiful Yelena. She sees herself as a pathetic grey mouse doomed to spinsterhood. A modern Instagram influencer would have told Sonya to own her assets: her ability to run the estate and her generous heart. But back in the 19th century Sonya was up against the force no positive mental attitude could have beaten. I'm talking about the patriarchy. 

The patriarchy made sure that women were judged first and foremost by their looks. Astrov the doctor knew very well that Yelena was an idle, empty person. She did no work, she had no hobbies. She constantly complained of boredom yet she thought teaching peasants' children or volunteering at a local hospital would be pointless and beneath her. Her indolence disgusted the doctor but he was in love with her because of her looks. Sonya would feed him, cared for him and listen to his woes but he simply didn't see her as a woman. 

In a patriarchal society there is only one set of values - the one established by men. In Chekhov's play, Sonya had no chance. A woman's worth was set by her beauty and that paradigm has been internalised by Sonya and generations of women after her. A Russian woman does not need to go to the theatre to admire the timelessness of Uncle Vanya. By and large the society and its attitudes towards women haven't changed that much. 

A modern woman might not realise it, but she has been born with misogyny deep inside her DNA. How many times have you seen a woman wearing make-up at a 7am gym class? Last September when I told my father that Bianca Andreescu beat Serena Williams in the US Open Final, his response was: "The Canadian? Not a beauty, that one".  It is common knowledge that female politicians receive a disproportionate coverage of their outfits rather than deeds. The virtue of femininity is not just about the looks. Harvard researchers found in 2010 that voters in the US regarded “power-seeking” women with contempt and anger, but saw power-seeking men as stronger and more competent. No wonder female candidates in the current primaries are having a hard time to convince voters. 

The internalised misogyny is what's driving some women to play damsel in distress or appear less intelligent than they actually are because our society is still stuck in the so called traditional ways of valuing women for their femininity. A woman may well choose to play a role of a DIY ignoramus and to show particular appreciation for flowers just to fit the stereotype. In Britain, a third of women earn more than their male partners, and most of them lie about their salaries no doubt to preserve fragile male egos. 

Dear readers, it is our responsibility to change the norms we inherited from Chekhov's Doctor Astrov and his 19th century pals. When considering female politicians, let's assess their competence not their likability. When complimenting young girls, let's use "strong", "kind" and "smart" at least as often as "pretty".  Let's celebrate women's ability to choose whether to have children, whether to become a stay-at-home mum or return to work after maternity leave and whether to look feminine or androgynous.

​As a Russian, I admire the longevity of Chekhov's plays but as a woman I despair. I honestly wish that one day we'd watch Sonya's anguish and Doctor Astrov's blindness and think "I can't relate to that at all."